Water system meeting next Wednesday

The public is invited to attend a kickoff meeting for a planned study of the Lovell water system next Wednesday, July 25, at 5 p.m. at Lovell Town Hall.

The water system study is funded through the Wyoming Water Development Commission.

“We went to the WWDC and were successful in requesting funding to update the town’s water model and start a GIS model of the water system that the town will be able to build on,” said engineer Frank Page of DOWL/HKM Engineering.

The study will compile all of the information on the water system upgrades that have been completed in recent years and update the hydraulic computer model and GIS maps of the system to help with system operation and long-term management, according to a study document.

“It’s kind of a network analysis on how the water flows through the pipes,” Page said. “It will tell us how the system is working.”

One of the key components of the study, he said, is an analysis of how the town’s two water tanks on the hill are working and whether a third tank near the hospital would be beneficial, Page said.

The current tanks are attached to the town’s lower pressure zone below the hill, which works by gravity from the Shoshone Municipal Pipeline and the two tanks. Residents of the upper bench, as well as the hospital, however, are supplied water via pumps that pump water up the hill, but when there is a power outage, water pressure drops immediately and the hospital, as well as residents, experience water pressure problems.

“We want to see whether an elevated tank near Wyoming and Nevada would be beneficial hydraulically and economically for the town,” Page said, “hydraulically because if the pumps were to go down, water pressure would remain high, and economically, because if the town didn’t have to run pumps all the time and could cycle them on and off it could be beneficial to the town with power and pumping costs.

“We want to tell people what we’re doing and identify problems we may not have considered through public input.”